High Voltage Family

Podcasts

John Carpenter’s Lost Themes

Greetings! I’ve been meaning to get to this for awhile, but I got a little…Lost.

John Carpenter’s Lost Themes

Composed, Performed, and Engineered by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies

John Carpenter is a massive inspiration to me, writer, director, composer of some amazing soundtracks, as I’ve started to venture into creating music by myself, his scores are often what I am chasing to a large degree. I actually had been stockpiling song ideas to expand on because I thought it would be fun to do an album of soundtracks to movies that don’t exist, so when I first heard about Lost Themes, I had two immediate reactions. First, “Goddammit, there goes that idea,” followed immediately by, “Dude! New Carpenter music!”

I ordered the album early, and waited impatiently for it to arrive, excited to see what this would turn out to be. It’s pretty much everything I hoped for and more. Tense, eerie, evocative music. It has what you want in Carpenter’s music, thick, pulsing synth’s, creepy melodies, pounding rhythms, distorted guitars. It isn’t self indulgent the way some instrumental music can be, it’s dense though, you can put this on and let it do it’s thing. Close your eyes, put on your headphones, let the fog creep in, let it carry you into the darkness. The album also allows Carpenter (and his son Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies) freedom to stretch things out a bit, pushing songs past the length you normally get in a film soundtrack, constantly moving forward. The songs ebb and flow, drawing you close, lulling you in, allowing you a moment to relax before you are taken again. They aren’t just melodic themes, but genuine compositions. Every song takes you on a journey, and with their cryptic one word names, it leaves to the listener to fill it in as they see fit.

I can picture people sitting at home, writing horror stories or screenplays, painting, drawing, grabbing a guitar or synthesizer, inspired by this album… I have been listening to this for awhile now, and every time I do, I catch something new. Thank you for doing this Mr. Carpenter. Now if you’ll excuse me, I feel the need to create something.